


An Unhappy Memory

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 13:12:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10491636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: An unpleasant case really upsets Blair





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday prompt 'forget'

An Unhappy Memory

by Bluewolf

It had been a long time, but Blair still couldn't forget... He suspected he never would - especially since he started working with Jim. He had seen so many things that would have reminded him, if he had forgotten.

But he hadn't forgotten.

Their most recent case - an elderly woman, beaten up and stabbed. She had  bled to death. Her sister, coming to arrange an evening out, had found her, and Dan Wolf estimated that she had been dead for at least three days.

Blair was still shaking hours later.

***

Naomi's rebellious teenage hippie days had lasted about a year. When she discovered she was pregnant - and to the best of Blair's knowledge she had never given anyone the name of the man responsible - she returned home, and stayed there until Blair was almost a year old. But she had itchy feet; the urge that had taken her away nearly three years previously was still strong, and when she learned that her mother was perfectly willing to care for Blair, she headed off.

At first she returned for a day or two every month, but when her father died, leaving her quite a lot of money, she went further afield, and visited less often.

Blair started school.

He was surprised to discover that more than a few of his classmates hated school, thought - even at that age - that it was a total waste of time, that they were being forced to learn things that they would never need to know. Blair, on the other hand, loved school, loved learning and absorbed what they were taught like a sponge. Luckily for him, he also enjoyed, and did well at, the simple sports they were given; it hadn't taken him long to realize that if the only thing he was good at was classroom work, he would be the most unpopular child in the class. But he was also good at sports, and he was quite surprised by the enthusiasm that invoked in his classmates.

And then everything changed.

He had been six, not quite seven...

He arrived home from school, dropped his schoolbag beside the coat rack, hung up his coat on the lower hook that had been provided for him, and went into the kitchen... where he found his grandmother, battered, bleeding, and gasping for breath.

He knew what to do. Despite his shock, he rushed for the phone, and dialled 911. After calling for help, he crouched beside his grandmother, trying to comfort her, until he heard a siren, and ran to open the door.

She was still alive when the EMTs got her to the hospital, but despite everything the doctors could do, she died during the night.

Blair himself was taken into care for a few days until the police managed to track down his mother; and then, after the funeral, Naomi sold the house - her siblings, all married, didn't need it, and it had been left to her - and headed off again, taking Blair with her.

But while Blair was happy to see Naomi, and enjoyed the travelling, he knew that he would rather be in the house he would never visit again, going over his homework and having supper with his grandmother.

***

Jim was worried. Blair seemed more than usually upset by the murder scene they had visited that morning, and he wondered why.

He decided to wait till they got home before asking Blair what was wrong; however, Blair surprised him, mid-afternoon, by saying, "Jim, could you ask Mrs. Harper's sister if one of her neighbors has been very attentive lately? Asking her out, stuff like that."

"Huh? Chief, Mrs. Harper was nearly sixty. Most older men, if they're looking for a second wife, are looking for a younger woman - "

"Not always. There was a case in Texas - it was about twenty years ago - same thing, a woman in her fifties battered and left to die. She was still alive when she was found that same day, but died in hospital just a few hours later. A neighbour had been asking her out, but she'd been turning him down - she'd been very happily married, and simply didn't want to remarry. The guy eventually decided that if he couldn't have her, he wasn't going to risk anyone else succeeding where he had failed... "

"Twenty years ago, in Texas? How do you know about that?"

"My family came from Texas."

"Well, yes, and I know how brainy you are, but how old were you? Six? Seven?"

"It was about two months before my seventh birthday."

"And you know about it? I know Naomi is more than a little liberal, but what was she thinking, letting you hear all those details?"

"She wasn't there. At the time, she was in Italy."

"So who was looking after you?"

Blair took a deep breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob. "My grandmother. I got home from school and found her... "

"God, Blair!"

"I knew Mr. Gibson had been... attentive, and told the police... He admitted it when they spoke to him. He'd given up on her ever saying yes to him. He got a death sentence, but it was changed to life imprisonment a few months later. I don't know if he's still alive, but if he is, he'll be at least eighty...

"Anyway, that was when Naomi started taking me all over the world. There wasn't anyone else she could leave me with."

"I thought you had cousins in Texas? So uncles or aunts?"

"Yes, but either Naomi didn't ask her siblings if one of them would take me, or she asked and they refused, or she maybe thought I was old enough to be able to travel around with her... which I was. She home-schooled me, then we came back to America when I was fourteen so that I could go to school and get the grades that would let Rainier accept me. That was when I got to know my cousins." He was silent for a moment, then said, "I enjoyed those years; but it was good being back, knowing where I'd be the next day. Naomi's a gypsy. I'm not."

"And I'm more than glad of it," Jim said as he pulled his guide into a comforting hug. So what if they were in the bullpen? It was obvious that Blair was disturbed about something; the others would understand.

He knew something like that was a trauma Blair would never forget; but Jim could - and would - give Blair the home and the stability that he so obviously needed; and he was glad to do it.

 


End file.
